Finally, an answer from the Whitehouse Petition site about publicly funded research

To that end, I have issued a memorandum today (.pdf) to Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication. As you pointed out, the public access policy adopted by the National Institutes of Health has been a great success. And while this new policy call does not insist that every agency copy the NIH approach exactly, it does ensure that similar policies will appear across government.

The memo actually comes from Dr. John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (also known as the APST&DWHOSTP)

What irks me even more is that inventions/patents arising from federally-funded research in institutions outside the government (e.g. universities, businesses, etc.) aren't allocated to the government.

When the feds retained title to inventions made with their funding the innovations died on the vine. Most inventions at the patenting stage are concepts requiring substantial further funding to be useful. This wasn’t happening under the old policy.

Particularly universities have done a good job of developing and commercializing these patents. While not ideal, the award of patent title to the entity doing the work and having an interest is the best yet for federally funded projects.